Thomas Coughlan: Where’s Labour’s election policy?

ANALYSIS

With just 81 days until the election, we’ve seen relatively little party policy from Labour.

Last week, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced a trio of justice policies, including changing the sentencing act to make posting crimes online an aggravating factor during sentencing, and introducing a specific offence targeting ram raids.

These changes will only be legislated after the election - voters would need to re-elect Labour to guarantee the enactment of the changes - making them essentially campaign promises.

Only they’re not. The changes were agreed to by Cabinet, and announced as any other government policy.

Labour does not have much official party policy, beyond a firm “Let’s Not Do This” when it comes to the issues of raising the age of superannuation eligibility and implementing a wealth tax or capital gains tax.

At Labour’s conference, Hipkins did announce a party policy to make permanent the “Apprenticeship Boost” scheme.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon, by contrast, boasted 27 policy announcements in his weekly RNZ interview last week. Act announces screeds of policy every week, and the Greens this month produced a tome of policy.

The problem is partly down to the fact Labour has not formally agreed on the party’s election manifesto, meaning it doesn’t have much, if any, election policy to announce - forcing ministers to rely on government policy.

This is not unusual for incumbents. Parties in opposition have to announce party policy - they’ve got no other option. Parties in Government have a choice between rolling out campaign-ey government policies, with all the resources of the state behind them, or turning to their cash-strapped party policy shops to rustle up some ideas. It’s little wonder most opt for the former.

Labour as a party has a suite of policy proposals that have already been adopted by members at the party’s conferences over the years.

But these do not become manifesto commitments.

The party’s manifesto comes after Labour’s roughly 20-member Policy Council put together a suite of draft manifesto policies that align with policy adopted by members at Labour conferences.

Those draft manifesto policies are then discussed and debated at a joint meeting of Labour’s parliamentary caucus and Labour’s governing council.

The policies that are agreed on at that meeting become the party’s election manifesto.

There are exceptions for one-off policy announcements the party wants to announce before the full manifesto is agreed on.

The manifesto does not immediately get released after this meeting, but individual policies can be plucked from it to announce on their own.

Because the party draft manifesto has not yet gone to this joint caucus-council meeting, Labour does not have a host of manifesto policies on the bench to announce.

One gap in Labour’s policy lineup is a tax policy, which was slated for announcement last week.

On Monday, Hipkins would not say when the tax policy would be released.

“We’ll announce that the fullness of time at the appropriate moment,” Hipkins said.